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Egon Schiele: by Sue Purkiss
With all that's happened in the interim, it seems like ages ago now; but in fact it's just a few weeks since I was gazing at this painting in the Leopold Museum in Vienna. It's a self-portrait of Egon...
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LUCY FITCH PERKINS AND HER "TWINS" by Penny Dolan
The second half of twentieth century brought a wealth of books into libraries, schools and into homes, led by technological developments, especially in colour printing. As a teacher, my class book-box...
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Mirror City - Celia Rees
1960s Guide to IbizaI recently found this guide book for Ibiza. It belonged to my aunt. She and my mother visited the island in the 1960s. The guide book is full of pictures of islanders in traditional...
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A Day Trip to Bath by Katherine Webb
I was recently blindsided somewhat by a journalist who'd come over to the UK from Germany to interview me, I thought, about my latest release over there. It turned out that she was after a travel piece...
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A Victorian Scandal: The Failure of the City of Glasgow Bank - Ann Swinfen
The near total collapse of the UK banking system in 2008 had repercussions which are still very much with us today. But in case we should delude ourselves into thinking that it was a unique near...
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Maps by Imogen Robertson
In a fit of post-Brexit, 'let's try and do something useful' at the end of last month, my husband and I repainted the living room. It was at least distracting. It also involved moving round great piles...
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Powder and Paint: Make-Up and the Medieval Woman by Catherine Hokin
"A woman without paint is like food without salt."You might think that quote is taken from a particularly literary edition of Femail magazine's never-ending 'name and shame celebrities caught without...
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Woman healers of the Seventeenth Century, by Leslie Wilson
A Young Lady called Henrietta Boyle, Christian Friedrich Zincke, Wikimedia If you think about women in medicine in the past, the chances are you'd think first of all of midwives, and yet, four hundred...
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WILD HUNTING: The life story of my first novel by Elizabeth Chadwick
The gorgeous refresh cover of my first novelActually the title is a misnomer. THE WILD HUNT wasn't my first novel at all, it was my eighth. However it was my first published novel. The other seven...
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Triplets by Miranda Miller
I’ve just become the grandmother of Adam, Felix and Laurence. Twins run in our family but these are the first triplets. It’s still rare - only two hundred a year are born in the UK - and in ancient...
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Favourite hideaways of mine in Ireland, by Carol Drinkwater
I have just returned from a memorable trip to Ireland - my semi-adopted homeland because I was actually born in London. My recently-departed mother and all her family were born and bred in County...
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Textures & textiles of Scottish Artists by Janie Hampton
Queen Victoria was brought up reading the novels of Walter Scott and after her first trip to Scotland in 1842, she became besotted with this part of her kingdom, promoting Highland cattle, tartans and...
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The True Cost of War by Julie Summers
I am working on a glorious project about the secret life of houses during the Second World War. It is a fascinating topic and there are some glorious details emerging. However, I do have to remind...
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Crime as Entertainment in the 19th century by Anna Mazzola
Photo credit: Lou AbercrombieOur July guest is Anna Mazzola.Anna lives in Camberwell, London, not far from where the murder at the heart of The Unseeing took place. The Unseeing is Anna's first novel....
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Cabinet of Curiosities by Katherine Webb
My first ever offering to the Cabinet of Curiosities are these very plain, rather dented pewter jugs:The largest stands at 10cm tall, the smallest at a mere 6cm; or, more importantly, stamped onto the...
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July competition
A slightly different competition this month!Anna Mazzola's post on 29th July lists different kinds of crime souvenir that Victorians collected (mugs, figurines, pieces of the hangman's rope). Tweet or...
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Will's Last Testament by Mary Hoffman
When I heard that Shakespeare's will was going to be on display in Stratford-upon-Avon - less than an hour's drive from where I live - I felt I had to go and see it. Containing three of Shakespeare's...
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History belongs in all fiction (Canberra's history, part one) by Gillian Polack
This month I asked readers what they’d like me to write about. I was given half a dozen good suggestions, and a couple of silly ones. The suggestion that stuck with me was to write about the history of...
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The beauty of Bunyan, by Vanora Bennett
I used to think it must be a twee little book, the Pilgrim’s Progress, because the four sisters in Little Women read the famous Christian allegory so assiduously on Sundays and it seemed to be full of...
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Thunder Powder, Phantasmagoria, and Artificial Asses' Milk - by Katherine...
This book has been in our family for a very long time; I remember opening it as a teenager and laughing over some of the contents with my mother, in whose bookcases I recently rediscovered it....
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